Digging into digital craft through design fabrication

Cable/Fabric Formed Structure Test

Today we were able to construct our first successful cable guided fabric formed origami pattern. The structure is a modified barrel vault that possesses load bearing (spanning) capacities and also seeks a transition from a larger scaled opening at the front to a smaller opening at the back. This will help with fitting the structure underneath the sloping cable net above. As can be seen here, we have decided to forego the cable guided valleys as sharp transitions for a gravity induced sag which produces a catenary curved section in the valleys which will (in theory) give us a form capable of transferring load paths more efficiently in each diamond shaped “beam” spanning from node to node. Once iced, these beams will become the units that construct the spanning arches over the interior.